Sylvia Ortiz explores the strange duality that many women endure, which is to say feeling simultaneously beautiful and ugly.

Ortiz’ women often have missing limbs, or their arms and legs are twisted and contorted in uncomfortable positions. And yet they have pretty faces, are delicate and feminine, and for all their distortion, are still quite alluring.

Usually in the art world the beautiful and the grotesque are juxtaposed against one another for effect (think “Beauty and the Beast,” the “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” etc). But Ortiz mixes the two inseperably in the same image.

The result is an image which at first draws us in with its bright colors and seductive eyes, only to then make us question why we’d be drawn to something so disturbing.

An exhibition of Sylvia Ortiz’ work opens tonight at Rogue Buddha in Minneapolis.